Hack-O-Lantern

Hack-O-Lantern
Directed by	Jag Mundhra
Produced by	Raj Mehrotra
Written by	Dave Eisenstark (as Burford Hauser) Carla Robinson
Starring	Hy Pyke Gregory Scott Cummins Katina Garner
Music by	Gregory Haggard
Cinematography	Stephen Ashley Blake
Edited by	Jag Mundhra Tom Atchison
Distributed by	Spencer Films
Release date	1988
Running time	87 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English

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Hack-O-Lantern is a 1988 American independent horror film, directed by Jag Mundhra. It stars Hy Pyke as a Satanic cult member who tries to recruit his grandson, Tommy (Gregory Scott Cummins), into the cult, which commits sacrifices on Halloween. It was issued on home video in various territories throughout the world, often under alternate titles, including Halloween Night, Death Mask and The Damning. Through its various home releases and a resurgence of interest in the 2010s, the film has attained a cult following.

Plot

On the eve of Halloween, young Tommy Drindle is visited by his pumpkin-farming grandfather, who gives him a wrapped gift and a pumpkin. Tommy begins carving the pumpkin but cuts himself, sucking the wound and telling his mother, Amanda, that he likes the taste and that Grandpa said blood was good for him. That night, Amanda's husband, Bill, confronts Grandpa in a remote farmhouse, where Grandpa is participating in a Satanic ritual. Bill threatens him but is bludgeoned and immolated by one of the Satanists. At home, Tommy unwraps the gift to find a medallion on a chain.

Thirteen years later, we see an adult Tommy swinging the same medallion, which has a pentagram on it. Grandpa visits him and says that tonight's Halloween will be special because Tommy will finally learn the extent of his own powers. A flashback reveals that Grandpa raped Amanda on her wedding night, insinuating that Grandpa is Tommy's biological father.

Tommy's brother Roger, a rookie deputy assigned to the town's Halloween party, is instructed by the sergeant to keep tabs on the local cemetery following a string of grave robberies there. Meanwhile, back at home, Tommy has a daydream in which he performs in a heavy metal band and is stabbed and decapitated by a demonic woman.

Tommy and his girlfriend Nora are picking up beer for the party when he is visited by Grandpa, who reminds Tommy that he must remain pure for tonight's ceremony. Amanda tells Roger that she's worried about his sister Vera finding love, since the family needs to stay together. Tommy shows Roger a Satanic shrine he's built in his basement. Nora, who has been swimming alone, is confronted by a cloaked, masked figure, which she assumes is Tommy in costume playing a prank. When she disrobes for him, he stabs her in the head with a pitchfork, killing her.

Grandpa arrives at the party location, where townsfolk are decorating, and Vera believes he's only there to keep tabs on Tommy. As Grandpa attempts to embrace Vera, he's confronted by her boyfriend, Brian, but Vera clarifies that the man is her grandfather.

After Tommy discovers Vera and Brian making out in her bedroom, he throws Brian out of the house. Tommy heads off to the ritual while Brian walks home through a cemetery and is pursued by the same mysterious figure who killed Nora. As Brian is retreating, he falls into an open grave and is bludgeoned with a shovel by the figure, killing him. Amanda enters her home disheveled and Vera tells her that Tommy assaulted Brian.

Meanwhile, Grandpa participates in another ritual at the farmhouse, in which he ordains a new female member into the coven. Roger, who is surveilling the cemetery with Vera's friend Beth, hears a disturbance but only finds a group of young trick-or-treaters. After the children are sent away, he and Beth have sex on a gravesite, after which he drops Beth off at Vera's house.

On the way to the Halloween party, Beth takes Vera to the cemetery to show her where she and Roger had sex and they find a hand protruding from the grave. Thinking it's a Halloween prank, Vera uncovers the grave to find Brian's corpse and assumes Tommy has killed him. Vera leads Beth to Grandpa's farmhouse to confront him and interrupts the ritual. Grandpa tells Vera she has "intruded upon the ceremony of blood" and says she must now be sacrificed, binding her arms and imploring Tommy to murder her. As Tommy raises a dagger to her, he instead cuts the ropes, freeing her, and she and Beth leave to find Roger.

The cloaked killer arrives at the party, just before Vera and Beth arrive and tell Roger about Brian's murder. One of the partygoers, Carrie, is followed into the restroom by the killer and suffocated to death. When Vera and Beth find Carrie's corpse, they laugh it off, thinking she's drunk. As Beth heads to the closet to hang up her coat, the killer emerges and strangles her to death, then hangs her in the closet.

Another cloaked figure arrives. Vera, thinking it's Tommy in costume, rushes to them and says the killer is at the party, but they remove their mask, revealing Grandpa. The killer emerges from the restroom and gets into a fight with Grandpa, ending with the killer knocking Grandpa off a staircase. Vera and Roger rush to Grandpa, who anoints Roger's forehead with a devil sign then dies. The killer attempts to escape the party and is shot in the back by Roger upon exiting. Hobbling to the orchard, the killer collapses and removes their mask, revealing Amanda. After she limps to Bill's gravesite, Tommy finds her and she tells him, "I only wanted to keep my family", before dying.

In the farmhouse, we see another Satanic ritual and find that Roger has now become the new leader of the coven.

Cast

• Hy Pyke – Grandpa
• Gregory Scott Cummins – Tommy
• Katina Garner – Amanda
• Carla Baron – Vera
• Jeff Brown – Roger
• Michael Potts – Bill
• Patricia Christie – Beth
• Larry Coven – Brian
• Bryson Gerard – Young Tommy
• Heidi Lupicki – Young Vera
• Lance Harvey – Young Roger
• Jeanna Fine (as Angel Rush) – Nora
• Dave Campbell – Sarge
• Marya Gant – Carrie
• Michael Mincinski – Bob
• Tracy M. Shuttleworth – Lou

Production

Filming for Hack-O-Lantern began in November of 1986. Five days into filming, during a nighttime graveyard shoot in Ventura, California, director Jag Mundhra fell and broke his left leg. After receiving surgery, he was able to return to the film when shooting resumed seven days later, albeit confined to a wheelchair and a cast.

Actor Gregory Scott Cummins stated that the film shoot took approximately four to five weeks, with filming happening every day for 20 hours a day, with no breaks. He added that no one on the shoot was paid and the film went through three different crews. Cummins also stated that director Jag Mundhra did not speak English and "was just assuming that we said the lines correctly. ... there were no notes, there was nothing, because he really did not understand English."

According to producer Raj Mehrotra, the film did not see a proper theatrical run in the United States, receiving only a few test screenings in the Los Angeles area.

Music

In addition to the score by Gregory T. Haggard (including the original songs "I Know You Don't Mean What You Say" and "Sweet Dreams"), the film also features the songs "Devil's Son" by D.C. La Croix and "Against the Law" by the Mercenaries.

Home media

After a number of releases on VHS through the years, Hack-O-Lantern was reissued by Massacre Video in 2017, as both a Blu-ray/DVD combo pack and a limited edition VHS tape. Initial releases of the Blu-ray/DVD also included a limited edition slipcase, and a bundle was available that included a theatrical poster. The Blu-ray release features a 2K restoration of the film from the original camera negative, as well as a commentary track by producer Raj Mehrotra and several other special features. The Blu-ray was eventually released without the DVD and slipcase and with color variations on the artwork.

On December 14, 2020, Louis Justin of Massacre Video appeared on an episode of The People's Court as the Plaintiff against a YouTuber who had bootlegged Hack-O-Lantern on their YouTube channel.

Retrospective critical reception

In Bleeding Skull: A 1980s Trash-Horror Odyssey, Joseph A. Ziemba states the film involves "a steady stream of gold-plated bullshit. No plot. No rules. No need for either. ... It's the Halloween-themed trash film that destroys me, in a good way, more than any other."

YouTube film reviewers Red Letter Media discussed Hack-O-Lantern (along with Vampire Assassin and Cathy's Curse) in episode 58 of their series Best of the Worst, released on October 26, 2017. Jay Bauman concluded that the film was "odd" but had "a wonderful, spooky Halloween atmosphere to it", and observed that the movie was held together by "unique", "weird" and "interesting" performances from stars Pyke, Cummins and Garner. Jack Packard called Pyke the "hallmark" of the film, but bemoaned the movie's low kill count.

Meagan Navarro of Bloody Disgusting rated Hack-O-Lantern as one of the 10 goriest slasher films of the 1980s, stating "this low budget slasher takes a sort of kitchen sink approach" and calling it a "cheese fest" that "delivers on the blood and gore."

Jason Shawhan of Nashville Scene opined that Pyke's performance was akin to "Divine playing Emperor Palpatine", and added that the film has "nudity so gratuitous that it loops around and becomes Roxy Music-album-cover iconic."

Legacy

On March 13, 2015, Exhumed Films hosted the film's first-ever official theatrical screening in the U.S. at the International House in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, shown in a triple feature with Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers and Don't Go in the Woods.

On October 28 of that year, the film had another screening in 35 mm at the annual "Dusk to Dawn Horrorthon" at the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica, California. According to Horrorthon curator Grant Moninger, "Every year ... we spend a year looking for prints that no one has seen yet. Hack-O-Lantern has not been shown in years." Alamo Drafthouse's Joseph A. Ziemba stated that only one 35 mm print of the film is known to exist.

On October 23, 2020, Hack-O-Lantern was screened on Shudder's The Last Drive-in with Joe Bob Briggs as part of "Joe Bob's Halloween Hideaway", appearing as the second film in a double feature with Haunt (2019).

External links

• Hack-O-Lantern on IMDb Search this movie on
• Hack-O-Lantern at Rotten Tomatoes

This article "Hack-O-Lantern" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Hack-O-Lantern. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.

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